In demand

When no one’s allowed to gather, everyone wants to stream. That’s kept the staff plenty busy at BoxCast, the Cleveland live streaming pioneer founded and led by Gordon Daly ’00, MS ’01. 

Daly’s company provides digital streaming services to customers that want to broadcast events. By late March, with people working from home and keeping their social distance, BoxCast’s viewership numbers surged about 20 times higher than usual, Daly told The Plain Dealer. What’s more, he was hiring. 

“It doesn’t really feel like there are any winners right now, and it’s very strange to be in a situation where the world feels like it’s melting around you, yet we’re very busy,” Daly told the newspaper. “The way we view it, now is the time the world needs us, because they need to communicate and that’s what we’ve built.” 

Daly, a former Rockwell engineer, launched BoxCast in 2013, after he and his early team helped a Westlake funeral home broadcast services over the internet. By its 10th anniversary in 2019, the company employed about 40 people and its broadcasts were viewed by more than 10 million annually. 

The recent surge in demand has come from faith-based organizations that are now streaming services, municipalities broadcasting public meetings, and fitness centers providing online classes, Daly said. The staff, working remotely, has had to hustle to serve the new and existing clients. 

The silver lining, he added, is that the health crisis may prompt institutions to become more digitally adept. 

“There was always a need to reach people remotely, COVID or not,” he told the newspaper. “This is just accelerating that, which I think is a healthy thing for society.”